


the fragile certainty

by reogulus



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-17
Packaged: 2018-03-30 22:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3954514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You were not James Wesley; it was your job to be James Wesley.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the fragile certainty

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _there is a speck_  
_of memory, then I was quiet._

 _What is true_  
_from everlasting to everlasting:_

_I found a good place. Then I was quiet._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In another life, you were a teaching assistant at a prestigious liberal arts college in New England. What you studied you could not say now, not anymore. It was a warm and sunny day, the Indian summer sun had toasted away any trace of the morning rain within minutes of noon. You pushed the heavy metallic door. It budged with the familiar creak drawn out in the clean, dry air.

At the centre the vast semi-basement that housed hundreds of cushioned chairs and a lone podium, seated a large, bald man in a suit. You hadn't noticed him until you walked down the sloped aisle to stand behind the podium, and laid out a folder you brought to collect essays that were due in twenty minutes. Some time between that moment and the first group of undergrads trickled into the room, you'd realized your error. Large wasn’t the right word, nor any other descriptor for size. He was enormous.

You wanted to say something:  _Are you in this class? I don't believe we've met._ Or _I'm leaving the folder here if you want to bring your paper down._  A comment about the weather, or the vague patterns of his necktie, anything. In the end there was only silence stretching out the duration of those minutes, long and short, and the light bulb in the far left corner of the ceiling square began to flicker. Eventually you walked towards the wall to turn it off.

Now, the man sat with half his face obscured by the shadows. You saw better, the beak of his nose, the hard line around his lips. The brush of his eyebrows that was the negative space of his brow bones. The whole of him, complete in a way that existed only under artificial lights that sunlight could not hope to replicate, in all your days with him to come. You stood behind the podium and noticed that he was looking at you, too, in a way that must have made you small; you felt the strain in your neck, but held your gaze steady. Up.

The door was open again and waves of sophomores obscured the line of sight, the seats filled up and in the sea of chatter and moving heads, the man stayed stoic like a bright orange buoy upon the dark waters at night. Even as the steady stream of papers floated down the aisles and your hands moved on auto-pilot to keep the pile tidy, the man did not move; kept your attention on his person like a pocket square, smoothed, folded and ready to be slid into place.

You broke off eye contact only as the professor strutted in, then scurried off to a corner seat. During the next hour she spoke of subjects you once knew as well as the lines on your palm, but had since faded to make room for information more vital to basic survival. You could only imagine the level of interest he took in them, back then.

At the end of lecture, you stayed until the room was emptied, said a polite goodbye to the professor. When the man walked up to you it was hard to suppress the feeling of claustrophobia, the imminent presence of him something you later got used to, the same way your body eventually took to underwater pressure in diving lessons. A matter of time.

You suppressed the feeling, in time for him to initiate a handshake. “James Wesley,” his voice carried warmth, held firm, aloft the air turned stale. “Pleased to meet you.”

When you put your hand against his, you’d forgotten that there hadn’t been a deal to seal. He smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The technique of killing cleanly was barely more than a requisite skill for a successful criminal. It was something you were good at, but never once practiced or marketed as some exquisite form of fine art. Fine art was other men’s--women’s--business.

He never liked guns. He learned the clever ways of using cleavers and knives and saws and tractors from adolescent years spent on a farm, the tricks to working with animals that required him to balance his weight on quick feet. That was the only way to live, he said; or, live until the day he got to apply the knowledge on animals of a different breed.

He was never fond of alcohol, either. Once, slightly inebriated, you asked him why. He said he could not afford to lose his sense of balance at any time, not even if he knew, rationally, that it would come back to him after some hours of sleep and glasses of water. At any given moment the world around him might collapse, and if he were to rise as the last man standing in the rubble to build it anew, he’d need to hang on to something before pulling himself back up.

So that was what balance was, you came to understand--insurance against occupational hazard. He laughed, got his glass of wine to clink against yours. Of all things, that was what became easier. You would eventually learn of its price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vanessa Marianna’s existence was an eventuality, her love an endgame. That was the important thing about the man you served: the discipline was not about falling for the right woman, but falling for _the_ woman at the right time. As a matter of taste he was a simple man, preferring the guise of minimalism in contrast with the complex web, woven to bind the city close. An identity kept phantom so the touch was light as gossamer, the thousands of people that bore his mark unaware. It was hardly magic; only the pride of his work--your work together.

Art was meant to be a break, not another means of meeting people; meeting people was work for him, more often than not. As it turned out, that wasn’t true in this case. After all, what made one painting of white art, and another commodity? What made one woman centrepiece, and others background? You didn’t have answers to those questions. At the end of the night there were blood and brains in the car, the disposal of which was the only quiet part in handling everything.

Discipline, you thought to yourself after a trip to the car wash and then the junkyard. The night was long and it hadn’t ended; sleep, now, before the war made an insomniac of the city. You were the visible hand of an invisible man. You fell asleep in a bedroom without art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What’s in a name?

By any other name you would be the same man but he wouldn’t. He’d murdered the man that gave him his name, the one thing of his father that he’d never be absolved of. When Marlene entered talks for a potential second marriage, Mr. Vistain was awfully considerate and left her the choice to take his surname or not. She disclosed to you her dilemma when you visited her in her son’s stead that Thanksgiving. He was in Barcelona, on a business trip disguised as vacation in a particularly uneasy circumstance.

It would be a lot easier, you tried explaining to Marlene. That name wasn’t--isn’t easy to live with. He would want her to have a fresh start.

She looked at you with terrible eyes that reminded you of him, the look in his eyes as he stared into the distance, turning away from the mess of dead bodies he’d fragmented with bare hands. The blank of inertia.

“But it’s only going to get harder for him, isn’t it? He’s already making it harder for himself.”

“Ma’am,” you wanted to say something, anything that might get her further away from the truth. That was part of your job, to protect her from it until natural aging did the rest. But you couldn’t lie to her eyes. “No. It will not become easier, I’m afraid.”

When he returned from Barcelona ten days after, the mention of his name would lead to violent tremors, the seeds planted for terror to grow. You would make a toast to that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You were not James Wesley; it was your job to be James Wesley. James Wesley was the name of the stillborn son that should have grown up a farmer’s boy, whose parents would never quite cease to grieve for him. It was the name bestowed upon Marlene Fisk’s son, after she’d begged and sobbed so much that the farmers could no longer bear to see or hear her. They took her boy and treated him like their own, never hesitated to give him responsibility suited to his age, never questioned him on his past. He still spoke of them with a fondness that was markedly different from how he spoke of Marlene. They taught him the importance of never forgetting where you came from, and never forgetting what was unjustly taken from you.

It was his job to be James Wesley; now it became yours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, in the few minutes of twilight consciousness as you lay in bed, you saw yourself back at the lecture hall, opening its door for the last time. Sometimes you opened the door and there was nothing there, no chairs or podium, just a man standing under tubes of flickering fluorescent lights. Sometimes you questioned him, sometimes he answered and other times he didn’t. You always ended up following him outside. Always, before waking up to darkness or light.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art was Vanessa Marianna’s business. She was as exquisite a salesperson as there ever was one, and you could hardly split your attention between her and what hung on the wall when the question was pitched to you,  _how does it make you feel?_

If you had to be in therapy anywhere, you thought to yourself, might as well go through it with expensive nothings in your surrounding. You could see the appeal for your employer, in this case; rarely did anyone dare, or care, to ask him about feelings. No matter how cliched the wording.

But for yourself, there was no use for engagement in this exchange. Consequently she was disappointed with your non-answer, but being a woman of good humour, her over-exaggerated sadness via comically down-turned corners of her mouth made you smile.

Suddenly, she was smiling too. “That’s it,” she whispered contently, leaning back with her arms crossed. “That’s a good smile, Mr. Wesley. You should wear it more often--” and before you could argue, added a quick note, “--when it is not in conflict with the nature of your work.”

 _The nature of your work,_ you repeated the words in your mind. Plural you this time, and her smile flowed along just the same, effortless. This was the woman he’d fallen for, the woman you’d always believed existed somewhere, who deserved him just as much as he deserved her. And yet, as she stood here with you, shoulder-to-shoulder in a room fit for any man, it was somehow hard to believe she was right next to you.

You had come to deliver something to her, something of yours. But first, you had to ask.

“How does it feel, Ms. Marianna?”

She tilted her head to the side in puzzlement, so you asked again.

“How does it feel to be, or falling, in love with him?”

For a moment, her eyes bore into your cheek. You felt everything you’d prepared falling out of your pocket, down your sleeves. Without a word, she took you by the shoulders and bent you towards her, gently, sliding her manicured hands down your arms, wrapping her fingers around your palms.

“I think,” she paused to swallow. “I think it feels for me as it did for you.”

 

Maybe you should have disagreed. Maybe it should have alarmed you that it came so easy, that she handed over what you were looking for on a gold platter. But she looked you in the eye, with all your cards falling out of your sleeves, and you could no longer challenge her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one knew the real reason you went to see Vanessa at the gallery; normally the ambiguity could put any other right hand man in a compromising position, but that was hardly the real risk at stake.

It was still too early for her to learn about his mother, you decided, because that was knowledge that could still hurt her. Most other things, though; most other things, she should know. In preparation for the right woman at the right time you had been keeping notes, his favourite vendor at the farmer’s market on Thursday mornings, how he liked to arrange his ties. In a way you had always been her placeholder; the content domesticity of doing up a bowtie, the practical prescience for which parts of his day that should not be inquired after. Everything that mattered, she had proven worthy to know about. Everything else.

At the end of your visit you handed her the modest notebook, with its dog-eared pages and dubious stains. Nothing like the cleanliness and detachment you had cultivated in exterior; this had always been at the core. You made her promise not to so much as take a peek at its contents until she was safe in her home, where the security detail was firm.

Later, when she was rushed into the emergency room, you retrieved her personal belongings in a clear bag as her lover stood vigil by the doors. She carried a lipstick, a pack of blotting tissues, and the notebook. In hindsight, that was, perhaps, the only moment in which you were moved by her perilous state of health more than it moved your employer.

That was the moment when you decided that, if she lived through this, you could resign to give your life for him. And then, she woke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From that point, it all happened fairly quickly. Much faster than you’d expected, you’d found yourself bleeding out in a chair.

Did you underestimate that woman? No, you overestimated her. With the first bullet lodged in your torso she could have tortured you, interrogated you on the truth about his past. Instead she was generously stupid, shot you point blank several times more and now, you’d ought to thank her for allowing you to take his secrets to the grave.

For sparing you a test of loyalty, you were grateful for this death. Perhaps you were, after all, a bit too eager.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suppose there was a future where you lived beyond the average lifespan of a criminal enterprise’s key associate. Suppose that was also the future where children surnamed Fisk-Marianna were born, and grew to be happy and healthy. Suppose Vanessa Marianna Fisk took everything you gave her and did right by them. Suppose that was the future where he only got everything he’d ever wanted.

Where would you be in that future? Retired from crime to become a live-in assistant for the ninety-something-year-old Marlene? Dead to the rest of the world, to everyone that knew you? Dead?

That was not the future where he’d need a right hand man, helping to clean a car full of blood and brains.

Your job was to be James Wesley; your job was to be useful to him, in life or death alike. What could be a greater shame than a universe that literally forbade you from holding up your end of the bargain?

 

Wasn’t that the deal you shook on, sacred in its wordlessness, the day you first met him?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As consciousness left you, you found yourself before the doors of the lecture hall. Before you extended your arm, he came out through them, not so much as glanced at you. Suddenly the halls were filled with the commotion of students heading out of classes concluded minutes ago, and he’d walked so far into the crowd that you’d almost lost sight of him. Not so enormous anymore. Not so--

Through a mouthful of blood you gasped for air like fish on land. Your eyes were trained on him, following him for as far as you could see. How you wished your legs could, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soon he would come for you.

With your last bit of command over your body, which was already growing cold, you conjured up a memory to make yourself smile. It was only fair, you figured. If you wanted Vanessa to follow your advice for the rest of her life, you should follow hers for the rest of yours, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mister Vistain was a kind man. A third-generation American born in Vermont, currently an accountant that managed taxes for small business owners. The youngest daughter from his previous marriage was Marlene’s favourite cashier at the grocery store, and he chatted with Marlene in the parking lot while waiting for her to get off work. You had eyes on Marlene when it happened, of course. When you told him about your mother’s conversation with Vistain and their subsequent plans to have lunch, he seemed happier than he’d been in months. It had been a rough quarter. You drove him upstate. He deserved to see this for himself.

The following week, you sat in the car with him, a modest sedan to blend in with the small-town aesthetic. You sat next to him as he craned his neck to the tinted window, big hands wrapped around small binoculars. Vistain said something to make Marlene laugh, and she touched his forearm gently. He couldn’t hear the joke, of course, but mirrored her smile nonetheless. He smiled like his mother; very few people had known that.

On your way back to Hell’s Kitchen, he tuned the radio to the melodies of soft jazz and said, “Marlene Vistain. I like the sound of that.”

You told him that you liked it, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_It’s sacrilege to imagine_

_how someone should or should not have _  
_ loved you, umpteenth time._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Not meant to be an origin story fic about how Fisk and Wesley met, but can be taken as such I suppose. Tried to retcon that poorly-written canon exit for Wesley as much as I could manage, hopefully it worked for some of y'all. I am really quite fond of Vanessa and Wesley's dynamic, and would have written more for them if there was room in this fic. RIP Wesley, it was fun to be in your head while it lasted.
> 
> The poem partially quoted in the beginning and at the end is "Reconcile" by Sarah Vap.


End file.
